Tech

Life After Kickstarter: Pebble Boasts More Than 190,000 Pre-Orders

The team behind the Pebble smart watch announced Thursday that it has completed the Kickstarter phase of its production and is moving actively to shipping devices pre-ordered from its website.

Pebble famously raised over $10 million from more than 85,000 backers on Kickstarter last year. The company posted a lengthy update on its Kickstarter blog and we spoke with Pebble co-founder and CEO Eric Migicovsky about the news and what's next for the smart watch.

According to Migicovsky, all Kickstarter orders are on their way to backers now. There was a delay for some of the color Pebble devices, but Arctic White units are shipping now. In addition, Pebble ran into some customs problems with Germany that the company is resolving now.

The next move for Pebble, Migicovsky says, is to "transition from the Kickstarter period to the pre-order period." To date, Migicovsky says Pebble has received over 190,000 pre-orders on its website, GetPebble.com. Combined with the Kickstarter orders, that's more than 275,000 orders since April 2012.

For Migicovsky, the overwhelming success is a double-edged sword. "We know there are hundreds of thousands waiting but unfortunately, we can't flip a switch and satiate that demand," he told me. Right now the pre-order process is more of a reservation system. Users receive an email confirming their order is ready to ship, complete payment and shipping information and get the product.

This means that if a customer decides he no longer want to wait for the Pebble smart watch — or wants to pick one up from Best Buy instead — he can do that without worrying about getting charged twice.

Migicovsky couldn't provide a timeline for Pebble's general availability, but he says that one of the company's core focus points is to ship "as many watches as physically possible."

Making Pebble the Best Wearable Platform

In addition to working on shipping devices as quickly and to as many users as possible, Pebble is also focused on building out its software.

Migicovsky says that the company's software goal is to "create the best platform and ecosystem for people to write apps for a wearable device."

Pebble started this process in May with its official SDK, and Migicovsky says that the company is reallly focused on creating the best developer experience.

Migicovsky also says the team realized that the apps — and the system around apps — are the most important things to build. The company is working on exposing more API calls on the watch so that developers can write more fully featured apps.

Moreover, iOS users can look forward to an update in the next few weeks that will bring support for Gmail and other IMAP email.

Migicovsky says that over 1 million watch apps have been downloaded to date. Most of those are for watch faces, which have become surprisingly complex and creative.

As a Kickstarter backer and Pebble owner, I can attest to the level of craft that has taken place with some of the apps and watch faces. My current watch face display the time, date and weather conditions for my area. It's insanely cool.

Another area that Pebble developers have rallied around is with the concept of the remote control. "People really love using their Pebble to control other things around them," Migicovsky explained.

Migicovsky says Pebble hasn't actively considered licensing its platform to other manufacturers or wearable makers. "We don't have anything to share, but ultimately we believe it's important to create an open ecosystem that can be used by as many people as possible. And that could include other devices."

With the level of competition happening in the smart watch space, Pebble could assert itself as a leader if its platform was viewed as the defacto development standard.

Migicovsky couldn't talk about the potential for Pebble under iOS 7, thanks to the NDA around the new features — but he did add that the team is very excited about the potential the new OS will bring.

Moreover, the company is actively working with some larger partners in the fitness space to bring more RunKeeper-like integration, although no names are ready to be announced yet.

Migicovsky will be conducting a Reddit AMA from 3 p.m. EDT to 5 p.m. EDT on Thursday, July 11 to answer additional questions from backers and interested users.

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